Anna Karenina
Anna had arrived in Petersburg early in the morning; the carriage had
been sent to meet her in accordance with her telegram, and so Alexey
Alexandrovitch might have known of her arrival. But when she arrived,
he did not meet her. She was told that he had not yet gone out, but was
busy with his secretary. She sent word to her husband that she had
come, went to her own room, and occupied herself in sorting out her
things, expecting he would come to her. But an hour passed; he did not
come. She went into the dining-room on the pretext of giving some
directions, and spoke loudly on purpose, expecting him to come out
there; but he did not come, though she heard him go to the door of his
study as he parted from the chief secretary. She knew that he usually
went out quickly to his office, and she wanted to see him before that,
so that their attitude to one another might be defined.
She walked across the drawing-room and went resolutely to him. When she
went into his study he was in official uniform, obviously ready to go
out, sitting at a little table on which he rested his elbows, looking
dejectedly before him. She saw him before he saw her, and she saw that
he was thinking of her.
On seeing her, he would have risen, but changed his mind, then his face
flushed hotly—a thing Anna had never seen before, and he got up quickly
and went to meet her, looking not at her eyes, but above them at her
forehead and hair. He went up to her, took her by the hand, and asked
her to sit down.
“I am very glad you have come,” he said, sitting down beside her, and
obviously wishing to say something, he stuttered. Several times he
tried to begin to speak, but stopped. In spite of the fact that,
preparing herself for meeting him, she had schooled herself to despise
and reproach him, she did not know what to say to him, and she felt
sorry for him. And so the silence lasted for some time. “Is Seryozha
quite well?” he said, and not waiting for an answer, he added: “I
shan’t be dining at home today, and I have got to go out directly.”
“I had thought of going to Moscow,” she said.
“No, you did quite, quite right to come,” he said, and was silent
again.
Seeing that he was powerless to begin the conversation, she began
herself.
“Alexey Alexandrovitch,” she said, looking at him and not dropping her
eyes under his persistent gaze at her hair, “I’m a guilty woman, I’m a
bad woman, but I am the same as I was, as I told you then, and I have
come to tell you that I can change nothing.”
“I have asked you no question about that,” he said, all at once,
resolutely and with hatred looking her straight in the face; “that was
as I had supposed.” Under the influence of anger he apparently regained
complete possession of all his faculties. “But as I told you then, and
have written to you,” he said in a thin, shrill voice, “I repeat now,
that I am not bound to know this. I ignore it. Not all wives are so
kind as you, to be in such a hurry to communicate such agreeable news
to their husbands.” He laid special emphasis on the word “agreeable.”
“I shall ignore it so long as the world knows nothing of it, so long as
my name is not disgraced. And so I simply inform you that our relations
must be just as they have always been, and that only in the event of
your compromising me I shall be obliged to take steps to secure my
honor.”
“But our relations cannot be the same as always,” Anna began in a timid
voice, looking at him with dismay.
When she saw once more those composed gestures, heard that shrill,
childish, and sarcastic voice, her aversion for him extinguished her
pity for him, and she felt only afraid, but at all costs she wanted to
make clear her position.
“I cannot be your wife while I....” she began.
He laughed a cold and malignant laugh.
“The manner of life you have chosen is reflected, I suppose, in your
ideas. I have too much respect or contempt, or both ... I respect your
past and despise your present ... that I was far from the
interpretation you put on my words.”
Anna sighed and bowed her head.
“Though indeed I fail to comprehend how, with the independence you
show,” he went on, getting hot, “—announcing your infidelity to your
husband and seeing nothing reprehensible in it, apparently—you can see
anything reprehensible in performing a wife’s duties in relation to
your husband.”
“Alexey Alexandrovitch! What is it you want of me?”
“I want you not to meet that man here, and to conduct yourself so that
neither the world nor the servants can reproach you ... not to see him.
That’s not much, I think. And in return you will enjoy all the
privileges of a faithful wife without fulfilling her duties. That’s all
I have to say to you. Now it’s time for me to go. I’m not dining at
home.” He got up and moved towards the door.
Anna got up too. Bowing in silence, he let her pass before him.
Chapter 24
The night spent by Levin on the haycock did not pass without result for
him. The way in which he had been managing his land revolted him and
had lost all attraction for him. In spite of the magnificent harvest,
never had there been, or, at least, never it seemed to him, had there
been so many hindrances and so many quarrels between him and the
peasants as that year, and the origin of these failures and this
hostility was now perfectly comprehensible to him. The delight he had
experienced in the work itself, and the consequent greater intimacy
with the peasants, the envy he felt of them, of their life, the desire
to adopt that life, which had been to him that night not a dream but an
intention, the execution of which he had thought out in detail—all this
had so transformed his view of the farming of the land as he had
managed it, that he could not take his former interest in it, and could
not help seeing that unpleasant relation between him and the workpeople
which was the foundation of it all. The herd of improved cows such as
Pava, the whole land ploughed over and enriched, the nine level fields
surrounded with hedges, the two hundred and forty acres heavily
manured, the seed sown in drills, and all the rest of it—it was all
splendid if only the work had been done for themselves, or for
themselves and comrades—people in sympathy with them. But he saw
clearly now (his work on a book of agriculture, in which the chief
element in husbandry was to have been the laborer, greatly assisted him
in this) that the sort of farming he was carrying on was nothing but a
cruel and stubborn struggle between him and the laborers, in which
there was on one side—his side—a continual intense effort to change
everything to a pattern he considered better; on the other side, the
natural order of things. And in this struggle he saw that with immense
expenditure of force on his side, and with no effort or even intention
on the other side, all that was attained was that the work did not go
to the liking of either side, and that splendid tools, splendid cattle
and land were spoiled with no good to anyone. Worst of all, the energy
expended on this work was not simply wasted. He could not help feeling
now, since the meaning of this system had become clear to him, that the
aim of his energy was a most unworthy one. In reality, what was the
struggle about? He was struggling for every farthing of his share (and
he could not help it, for he had only to relax his efforts, and he
would not have had the money to pay his laborers’ wages), while they
were only struggling to be able to do their work easily and agreeably,
that is to say, as they were used to doing it. It was for his interests
that every laborer should work as hard as possible, and that while
doing so he should keep his wits about him, so as to try not to break
the winnowing machines, the horse rakes, the thrashing machines, that
he should attend to what he was doing. What the laborer wanted was to
work as pleasantly as possible, with rests, and above all, carelessly
and heedlessly, without thinking. That summer Levin saw this at every
step. He sent the men to mow some clover for hay, picking out the worst
patches where the clover was overgrown with grass and weeds and of no
use for seed; again and again they mowed the best acres of clover,
justifying themselves by the pretense that the bailiff had told them
to, and trying to pacify him with the assurance that it would be
splendid hay; but he knew that it was owing to those acres being so
much easier to mow. He sent out a hay machine for pitching the hay—it
was broken at the first row because it was dull work for a peasant to
sit on the seat in front with the great wings waving above him. And he
was told, “Don’t trouble, your honor, sure, the womenfolks will pitch
it quick enough.” The ploughs were practically useless, because it
never occurred to the laborer to raise the share when he turned the
plough, and forcing it round, he strained the horses and tore up the
ground, and Levin was begged not to mind about it. The horses were
allowed to stray into the wheat because not a single laborer would
consent to be night-watchman, and in spite of orders to the contrary,
the laborers insisted on taking turns for night duty, and Ivan, after
working all day long, fell asleep, and was very penitent for his fault,
saying, “Do what you will to me, your honor.”
They killed three of the best calves by letting them into the clover
aftermath without care as to their drinking, and nothing would make the
men believe that they had been blown out by the clover, but they told
him, by way of consolation, that one of his neighbors had lost a
hundred and twelve head of cattle in three days. All this happened, not
because anyone felt ill-will to Levin or his farm; on the contrary, he
knew that they liked him, thought him a simple gentleman (their highest
praise); but it happened simply because all they wanted was to work
merrily and carelessly, and his interests were not only remote and
incomprehensible to them, but fatally opposed to their most just
claims. Long before, Levin had felt dissatisfaction with his own
position in regard to the land. He saw where his boat leaked, but he
did not look for the leak, perhaps purposely deceiving himself.
(Nothing would be left him if he lost faith in it.) But now he could
deceive himself no longer. The farming of the land, as he was managing
it, had become not merely unattractive but revolting to him, and he
could take no further interest in it.
To this now was joined the presence, only twenty-five miles off, of
Kitty Shtcherbatskaya, whom he longed to see and could not see. Darya
Alexandrovna Oblonskaya had invited him, when he was over there, to
come; to come with the object of renewing his offer to her sister, who
would, so she gave him to understand, accept him now. Levin himself had
felt on seeing Kitty Shtcherbatskaya that he had never ceased to love
her; but he could not go over to the Oblonskys’, knowing she was there.
The fact that he had made her an offer, and she had refused him, had
placed an insuperable barrier between her and him. “I can’t ask her to
be my wife merely because she can’t be the wife of the man she wanted
to marry,” he said to himself. The thought of this made him cold and
hostile to her. “I should not be able to speak to her without a feeling
of reproach; I could not look at her without resentment; and she will
only hate me all the more, as she’s bound to. And besides, how can I
now, after what Darya Alexandrovna told me, go to see them? Can I help
showing that I know what she told me? And me to go magnanimously to
forgive her, and have pity on her! Me go through a performance before
her of forgiving, and deigning to bestow my love on her!... What
induced Darya Alexandrovna to tell me that? By chance I might have seen